LinkedIn's Connected: A 'Selectively Useful' App?

LinkedIn has extended the functionality of an app designed to help you stay in touch with your network to Android users. The Connected app debuted on iOS in July.

The professional social network boasts the app is a "fast, easy and smarter way" to strengthen your professional relationships and get "relevant updates" about the people you know.

But Kamal Ahluwalia, CMO at Apttus, was less enthusiastic. "It's selectively useful," he said.

What It Offers

The app reflects LinkedIn's growing interest in mobile. Designed to replace LinkedIn's Contacts app, it melds notifications from the desktop version of LinkedIn with additional insights about the people in your network.

The app lets you sync your calendar with your contacts and can also deliver pertinent information about people you’re meeting via pop-ups to help you kick start conversations, Haider Sabri, LinkedIn engineering manager wrote on the company’s blog.

Once you log in, you can access a series of cards that provide news including job changes and work anniversaries.

So how does that translate to real world usefulness? "LinkedIn has done a good job of keeping noise down to an acceptable level,” Ahluwalia told CMSWire.

If it adds convenience and "a more nimble way" to turn your contacts into a business network, then it could be useful.

"But LinkedIn needs to demonstrate the value it's offering in a big way, right off the bat,” continued Ahluwalia, whose marketing responsibilities include social media. Apttus operates a cloud platform to help businesses with the quote-to-cash process.

Connected gives a hint of LinkedIn's business strategies, which seem to include capitalizing on its data to provide its users broader insights about such things as the social reputation of contacts and a user's relationship patterns.

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